New Release Round Up

Here are a few tasty new releases and a couple of tracks acquired via the blogosphere to brighten up your Friday. A veritable smorgasbord for you to sift through and pick out the ones you like.

First up is a second track from Canadians The Rural Alberta Advantage taken from their (very good) new album Departing and showcasing again their ear for a perfectly pitched tale of longing and quiet desperation.

Download The Rural Alberta Advantage – North Star mp3 (from Departing)

Next come Brooklyn’s Widowspeak and their new single via Captured Tracks. It is a nicely hazy, dreamy pop nugget that makes those Mazzy Star comparisons completely understandable.

Download Widowspeak – Harsh Realm mp3 (from Harsh Realm 7″)

Sleep oOo Over offer up Casual Diamond as the first single from their forthcoming debut album. It is fragile, ghostly and rather wonderful.

Download Sleep oOo Over – Casual Diamond mp3 (from Casual Diamond 7″)

By contrast, we picked up You’ve Gone Stray by Tyburn Saints via the excellent The Devil Has The Best Tuna blog, where it is described as sounding like “the theme tune to a slasher film written by Nick Cave. It could well be the sexiest serial killer based love song ever written.” Certainly good enough for a repost on MM.

Download Tyburn Saints – You’ve Gone Stray mp3 (from For The Benefit Of Strangers)

The rather curiously named Bass Drum Of Death dabble not in the pond of drum & bass (thankfully), but in an altogether more sleazy pool of garage rock, greasy guitar jangle, reverb and some high octane, no nonsense rock ‘n’ roll.

Download Bass Drum Of Death – Young Pros mp3 (from GB City)

New West comes from the self-titled debut album by Cult of Youth and is most commonly described as neo-folk (though we’ve seen one reference to something called post-punk doom goth…). However you want to define it, the dramatically deep baritone of vocalist Sean Ragon is enough to create a palpable sense of menace and foreboding which we’re quite fond of here at MM.

Download Cult of Youth – New West mp3 (from Cult of Youth)

Via Citizen Dick comes our introduction to Shivering Timbers, and another track well worthy of a re-post here on MM. Their description: “Evening Prayer is the epic track of the record. Listen to the whole thing. Spoken word, psychedelia, straight blues, reverb filled square-dancing. This is the kitchen sink, and it’s so, so good.” They’re not wrong either!

Download Shivering Timbers – Evening Prayer mp3 (from We All Started In The Same Place)

Lastly Phineas & The Lonely Leaves is a band based out of Peekskill, NY. Their latest release, The Kids We Used To Be is just out and captures the essence of growing up in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York. Check out a couple of tracks of trademark driving rock force coupled with an infectious Americana indie folk swing.